It's Thanksgiving. A time to be thankful. A time to be enveloped in the warmth of your family and your home. But who are we kidding? This four day weekend usually ends with a couple of family members no longer speaking to each other and a few others on new prescriptions of valium.
Unfortunately, since my husband and I are each one of only two siblings and because our families are geographically dispersed, I don't get to see large fireworks displays. However, I DO get to rub shoulders even more than usual with the creature that lives in my basement - my MIL. That would be short for Mother-In-Law. No F at the end.
"More than usual" is actually somewhat of a misnomer this year, since we have been existing in something Dante never bothered to write about that I will call "Sprained Wrist Hell". My MIL sprained her wrist in mid-October, magically becoming a blind paraplegic. The doctors can't really explain this, but I can. It's called "just her usual personality, but with a sprained writst".
For example, she has always micromanaged everything she observes in the car, probably out of a fear of some crisis that the rest of us wouldn't even imagine. For example, two minutes after leaving our driveway we get, "Jayden, don't sing the alphabet so loud. You're libel to make your mother distracted, cause her to drive off the road, and we will all end up in the hospital!" (I swear these are real quotes). And then there's always my favorite which is the constant comments on the way back from our neighborhood grocery store, "slow down, you're going to have to turn right when you get over this next hill." Once I snapped, "Do you really think I don't know how to get to my own house from two miles away?!?" - but she didn't notice or care. The next direction was delivered within 30 seconds. I was actually relieved, because then I knew I hadn't hurt her feelings. Whew. That was a close one.
I actually do love my MIL, and she is a sweet lady. She loves me, my husband and my daughter, and she honestly tries really hard to respect my area of the house. A lot of women have worse mothers in law. It is important to understand that before I say this - I think she has a real condition that causes her to have severe anxiety over a multitude of crises that will NEVER happen. The obsession over these will cause things like a random text one day warning me never to use dryer sheets on Jayd's clothes because some of them have certain chemicals that completely destroy your ability to function physically and mentally - or something like that. I stop reading after the first 5-10 sentences and go on to my usual household chores, such as to throw Jayd's clothes in the dryer (with a dryer sheet). On my way back across the hall, by the door that functions as a gateway between my "home" and "the basement" I will discover a series of paper notes that have been pushed under the door, and I will also have a voicemail and an email. All addressing the current urgent issue of dryer sheet toxins. She does this instead of coming to talk to me - in the interest of not disturbing or bothering me, because there is absolutely nothing disturbing about that, right? But at least her heart is in the right place.
What a sprained wrist adds to all this, of-course, is that she needs to be driven everywhere, and subsequently escorted around wherever she is. This is where the hell comes in. Between multiple trips to various stores, post office, doctor, and whatever, we get to hang out a lot. Her sprained wrist makes her helpless, and I get such honors as holding the produce bag open while she very closely examines 10 or so pears one at a time and places them in the bag. She asks for everything in a kind of helpless little voice and makes a big production out of lifting a bag of broccoli (with her good hand). And that brings us to... THANKSGIVING!
She is, because she actually IS very sweet, making a pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving. Pies can be fickle, and my husband is picky about his pumpkin pie, so she bakes them in my oven instead of her basement appropriate toaster oven that's probably from the 50s. As such we got even more quality time together this afternoon. She started by asking me to read her the recipe, because she can't read with only one hand. My sixth grade self had to bite her tongue to hold back the "...you read with your eyes and not your fingers..." comment that was begging to be said. So I'm reading the instructions when she interrupts me to say, "if I do it like that, it will be gummy because the pie filling will seep into the crust and..." she kind of trailed off into an incoherent mutter. I stopped reading and waited to be directed. Was I free to go back about my business? Was I meant to keep reading? Finally she said, "Well, maybe some people like it gummy. Do you like it gummy? Is that why you want me to make it that way?" Now my teen self was biting my tongue. Because 14 year old Elle would have said "WHO LIKES GUMMY PIE? WHO???? And I don't care HOW you make it. I'm reading YOUR recipe to you at YOUR request. I'd rather be writing a blog about how fricking crazy you are!!!!!"
OK. Sorry. Just had a little break and some deep breaths. Out of curiosity, is it valium then beer then liquor? Liquor, pills, then wine? Just wondering for a friend of mine who wants to know. Not me. But let me know, so I can tell her.
Well, I'm signing off. I'm being beckoned to take a pie out of the oven. And that's ok, because that does actually require two hands. Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
